Zhao Wei, once dubbed as China's showbusiness equivalent of Warren Buffett, lost nearly $600 million from the recent stock market crash. (Photo : Reuters)
As the stock market slides in both mainland China and Hong Kong, Chinese stars like Zhao Wei and Zhang Ziyi also felt the plunge.
Zhao Wei, regarded as China's first "national idol" with credits in blockbuster films such as "Shaolin Soccer" and "Red Cliff," had 1.93 billion shares with her husband in Hong Kong-listed Alibaba Pictures, the film production arm of the Chinese e-commerce titan Alibaba Group. Zhao also has 1.17 million shares in Talent International Film Co. Ltd., a film studio based in Beijing. After the markets dropped, Zhao and her husband's fortune fell an estimated 3.6 billion yuan ($570 million) from its peak.
Zhang Ziyi, best known in the West for her role in "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon," also had nine million shares in real-estate developer Dalian Wanda Commercial Properties purchased through her mother Li Zhuosheng. As of July 7, Zhang's fortune fell by HK$470 million ($60.63 million).
Other homegrown actors and actresses affected by the stock market crash include Fan Bingbing, who lost 11 million yuan ($18 million), and Zhang Guoli, who saw his fortune shrink by 120 million yuan ($19.33 million) due to his shares in Huayi Brothers Media Corp. Huayi has stopped trading of its shares as of Wednesday.
More than half of the approximately 2,800 companies listed on the Shanghai and Shenzhen stock exchanges suspended trading of their shares to curb the stem of losses amid Chinese stock market turmoil.
But Chinese shares rebounded strongly on Thursday, with the Shanghai Composite Index rising 5.76 percent to finish at 3,709.33 points, and the Shenzhen Component Index surging 4.25 percent to close at 11,510.34 points.
The ChiNext Index, which tracks China's Nasdaq-style board of growth enterprises, also climbed 3.03 percent to end at 2,435.76 points.
